CMBS Wrong Turn at Albuquerque - New Scenario Available on the Repository

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My second scenario is now available on the Repository. You can download it here.

The scenario features a US Scout Section finding itself in the path of a larger Russian mechanized force. I tried to do something a little more experimental with this scenario and give it a bit of a TDG or "in media res" feeling. Contact has already been made and now you, as the player, must develop the situation in accordance with your higher command's objectives and intent (or at least that's the idea). To that end, the briefing intentionally does not discuss the details of your objectives, any point values, reinforcement details, etc. - instead, there is a briefing within the briefing, from which the player is intended to determine what needs to be done. Specific objective and reinforcement details are included in the Designer's Notes tab as a fail-safe.

The scenario is pretty small, with the US player eventually receiving the bulk of a mechanized Scout Platoon plus attachments, and plays out on a new 1200 x 800m map featuring four Red AI plans. Although I would recommend real time play, both my testers got on pretty well doing WEGO. It is playable as Blue only; there are no Blue AI plans and it is not balanced for H2H play.

Special thanks to knightsabret and bangalor44 who gave me great feedback during testing.

From the briefing:

SITUATION

"CONTACT FRONT! BMP! FIRING!"

You have barely processed what's happening before the Bradley's chain gun hammers to life, the acrid smell of gunpowder filling the fighting compartment. The BMP turned out of a farm complex about 450m to your front, exposing its sides to your 25mm main gun. Its crew probably never even saw you.

You give your gunner the go-ahead to fire on the infantry with the coax, and order the driver to start backing down the slight rise behind you before opening Blue Force Tracker (BFT) on your PDA. And that's when you notice that your Scout Section is on the wrong road, about a quarter mile out of position.

MISSION

Before setting out this morning, you were briefed by the Scout Platoon leader as follows:

"I want you to take your section down ROUTE DAGGER towards this town, marked on your maps as OBJECTIVE TUCSON. The battalion main effort will be attacking down a parallel route so we've been tasked as flank security.

DAGGER is a two-lane blacktop road that runs through a number of towns parallel to the TF's axis of advance, and several smaller roads feed into it. The towns are all marked on BFT east to west as FRESNO, LUBBOCK, ALBUQUERQUE, and TUCSON. Second to the TF's route, it's the largest and most improved road in the AO, which makes it important to us and the Russians - it's a probable axis for any Russian counterattacks, so we need to secure it to prevent that and to provide an alternate route if the main effort fails.

I've tasked a couple sniper teams and one of their Humvees to your section, and we're sending along an engineer squad and their Bradley to breach or evaluate any obstacles on the route. I'm also giving you priority for our Raven. Second Section will be to your north reconnoitering a third route. I'll be with 1st Section and the HQ elements trailing a few kilometers behind you so that I can manuever to your Section or 2nd Section if either of you make contact. Since the Air Force has finally got control of the sky, there should be lots of air around today. Maybe we'll get lucky and have some available if we run into trouble. Main effort has priority of fires for all TF artillery.

We don't know what, if any, enemy resistance we'll hit. Most intelligence preparation has been targetted at the main effort's axis of advance, so we don't have the luxury of satellite imagery or recon flights over our route. However, TF does expect that we'll make contact today - there are a lot of Russians in front of us and they'll probably try to manuever to cut off the TF advance at some point, so stay on your toes.

It is critical that we secure DAGGER and prevent any Russian advances along that axis. Failure to do so will expose the TF's flank to enemy attack. If we run into Russian forces, we're to destroy them if we can. If we run into something we can't handle, our orders are to go firm at a defensible position and hold until relieved. TF reserve will be about an hour behind us at any given point, so you'll probably only have to hold that long if we make contact."

Your column is currently sitting on an unmarked road, with the town designated ALBUQUERQUE on your maps about 200 meters behind you. You must have taken a wrong turn off of ROUTE DAGGER somewhere in the town, and ROUTE DAGGER is now about 400 meters to your south.

ALBUQUERQUE is a small town with many residential and small commercial buildings. The most notable structures are the seven storey church tower and five storey hospital building. ALBUQUERQUE is surrounded by farms and fields. To ALBUQUERQUE'S east, where your column now sits, is a ridge rising about 10 meters, then plateauing and running east. The ridge is wooded, and there are some copses among the farms and fields.

It is currently 0815 on 18AUG2017. Weather is clear, cool, and dry with a gentle wind from the west.

FRIENDLY FORCES

You command 3rd Section, Scout Platooon, TF 1-77 "Steel Tigers" (CAB). Your section has one Bradley (APS) and one M2-equipped recon Humvee. Fortunately, one of your more "resourceful" Scouts has obtained a Javelin launcher for your second team, and there is a Javelin in your Scout Bradley.

Your Section is followed by two sniper teams in an unarmed Humvee and an engineer squad in another APS-equipped Bradley brings up the rear. You also have the Scout Platoon's Raven UAV available.

The Scout Platoon is at full-strength, as are the attached sniper teams and engineer squad. Your scouts are generally highly-skilled and well-motivated. This is the first time you've worked with the snipers or engineers, so aren't sure of their competence.

ENEMY FORCES

Through the smoke, you can tell that the wreck in front of you is a BMP-2M. Unfortunately that's not much to go off of. You couldn't make out exactly how many dismounts made it out or if they were carrying any equipment that would tell you what sort of formation it was. One thing is for sure though - where there's one BMP, there's bound to be more.

BASIC PLAN

You will have to develop and execute a plan according to the mission and intent outlined by the Scout Platoon leader this morning, and you obviously want to keep as many of your men alive as you can. But act quickly - there are probably more enemy forces immediately to your front.

What now, Sergeant?

NOTES

Point values for objectives are deliberately omitted from this briefing. The idea is to put the player "in the boots" of the Scout Section leader. You should determine what you need to do in light of your forces, your estimate of the enemy's forces, and, most importantly, the objective(s) and intent expressed by the Scout Platoon leader in your brief this morning.

However, if you feel you need to know the objective points or details of any potential reinforcements before beginning the battle, these are provided in the Designer's Notes tab below.

At the risk of sounding like I'm blowing my own horn, I really enjoyed this scenario while I was testing it. Even knowing the enemy's possible courses of action, it can turn into a real nail-biter. As I said in my WIP thread, I've had results ranging from a cakewalk, to my CO and a couple Humvee drivers holed up in a church with only a few AT4s to hold off a platoon of Russian armor. Depending on your decisions and the breaks it can be really tough, and Blue cannot afford to throw away a single asset if they want to win. The Red AI plans and number of tactical options available to the player, combined with a relatively short timeframe, should give this scenario some significant replayability - if things don't go your way, another crack at it should be fruitful. Comments from my testers seem to echo the intensity and replayability.

As always, any feedback whatsoever is highly appreciated whether by post here, PM, or email to astanocmscens @ gmail . com, and I'm always interested to hear how people do with the scenario.

As smoke rose from the destroyed BMP 500m distant, Sergeant Mayes new he had to act fast.

He ordered his Javelin section under Specialist Elkins back 500m to the copse to provide cover if they had to bug out in case the Russians were moving in strength.

And he ordered his driver, Sergeant Powers to back up the CFV to the church to setup his CP, with Kovacs sniper section.

The rest of his small outfit, Crafts Engineers and Askew’s sniper section, were ordered to take up ambush positions in the outskirts of Albuquerque.

Sergeant Craft’s team grabbed the 4 AT’s out of the Bradley and dispersed.

Within 4 minutes the teams were in position scanning the eastern horizon, with the Raven being prepped to provide some eyes in the sky.

All that could be seen or heard was the thick pall of smoke from the wrecked BMP.

Mayes thought, “had he gone defensive to quickly?” He knew he was in trouble for getting his team in the wrong position, now would that be compounded by being overly cautious? He would know soon enough.

Kovacs shouted down the church stair well “get that Javelin up here, we’ve got 3 BMP's 800m moving fast”

The deadly missile was away and in seconds found its mark.

Kovac’s sniper team started to pick off the dazed survivors.

Two more Jav’s lit up defenceless BMP’s but now Mayes was out of missiles and had to wait for the Russians to get into a close quarter fight, if they still had the stomach for it.

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I just finished the scenario, rushed here to read theforger's AAR, and I can't emphasise enough just how angry I am feeling at myself right now. I destroyed 3 enemy tanks, at least a dozen enemy AFV's and every enemy troop that approached my positions, losing 2 Bradley's and a small handful of my own men. I got overconfident thinking I had killed all the enemy armour so I moved my remaining Bradley forward into the open fields in search of any enemy troops that had retreated, my Helo's hadn't spotted any survivors so surely it was just a case of mopping up, but to my complete horror I spotted 3 T90's moving in column formation straight past my Bradleys exposed flank. Kaboooom, the lead T90 obliterated my Bradley, I turned the game off, my men were all out of AT weapons...

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Thanks very much for the compliment, but I don't know how keen I am on doing a campaign. I barely have the attention span to play a campaign - I think the last one I actually finished was Kunst des Krieges in CMSF (on second thought, that might be the only campaign I've completed) and I haven't even started 2/3 of the CMBS ones - let alone make one. That's a huge amount of work and my hat is really off to anyone who can make one solo.

At various points through conceptualizing and designing this scenario, I did consider adding elements of the TF reserve mentioned in the briefing as reinforcements at about the one hour mark, but decided I wanted to keep this scenario pretty tightly focused on the Scout platoon. I may still revisit that idea in the future. I'm pretty new at making complete, finished, and polished scenarios, so I'm trying to limit my scope for now, but I think one day it might be fun to turn what is now this scenario into just the first hour of a long, drag-out company- or battalion-sized battle on an expanded map. We'll see how I feel about that once I have some more experience with bigger scenarios.

I just finished the scenario, rushed here to read theforger's AAR, and I can't emphasise enough just how angry I am feeling at myself right now. I destroyed 3 enemy tanks, at least a dozen enemy AFV's and every enemy troop that approached my positions, losing 2 Bradley's and a small handful of my own men. I got overconfident thinking I had killed all the enemy armour so I moved my remaining Bradley forward into the open fields in search of any enemy troops that had retreated, my Helo's hadn't spotted any survivors so surely it was just a case of mopping up, but to my complete horror I spotted 3 T90's moving in column formation straight past my Bradleys exposed flank. Kaboooom, the lead T90 obliterated my Bradley, I turned the game off, my men were all out of AT weapons...

BTW great scenario and map, I will definitely play it again soon.

Glad you liked the scenario and the map, and sorry about your luck. With your limited forces, and especially limited AT assets, it can be very important to have eyes on where the enemy is or might be in order to hold out, and sometimes keeping those eyes alive is the biggest challenge in the scenario. (Also, not sure if what's your driving at, but AFAIK the helicopters won't give you contact icons - the only way to know if they've spotted something is if they shoot at it).